Mayor’s failure to recruit officers has crippled Pittsburgh Police
The Pittsburgh Bureau of Police faces a staffing crisis unprecedented in its modern history. The Gainey administration, due largely to its own incompetence, risks depleting the Bureau to dangerously low staffing levels, with an exodus of retirements and resignations coupled with a police academy that’s unprepared to replace them in sufficient numbers.
Mr. Gainey and the city’s new police chief must make boosting recruitment and morale a top priority. If current trends continue, by 2025 the department will be unequipped to handle core functions and respond effectively to rising crime.
It’s not that Mr. Gainey has defunded the police. In fact, the new contract negotiated by his office includes welcome raises for officers, whose pay still lags most suburban departments.
Pay raises alone, however, won’t stop the decline. An understaffed, overworked and overstressed department will continue to undermine public safety and expose the department to potentially costly and destabilizing errors and misjudgments.
A predictable crisis
Public safety officials and the mayor’s office estimate that Pittsburgh Police need 900 sworn officers. Now, the department has only 811, after losing more than 20 officers to retirement or resignation already this year, a pace nearly twice the usual before 2020.
When Bill Peduto became mayor in 2014, the department had 832 officers, with an additional 52 recruits in training. Every year in office until the COVID pandemic, Mr. Peduto called at least two classes to the police academy, each with 30 to 40 members. At its peak under Mr. Peduto, the bureau was overstaffed, with nearly a thousand officers.
In 2020, due to COVID and the decline in public trust after the murder of George Floyd, police departments nationwide maintained fewer officers. By the time Mr. Peduto left office at the end of 2020, Pittsburgh’s police force was, again, near 900 — with zero recruits in the pipeline.
Amid a sloppy transition between mayoral administrations, Mr. Gainey either did not understand the coming crisis or refused to address it. Even though the Peduto Administration set aside funding and laid the groundwork for a police academy class in 2022, Mr. Gainey never moved forward.
A vicious cycle
Each of the city’s six police zones needs about 90 officers for regular patrols. Altogether, that’s 540 of the 900. In addition, the investigations units, such as major crimes and narcotics, historically contain at least 150 officers, but arguably need 200. Beyond that, more officers are needed for administration and for community policing initiatives, including walking beats and social worker co-response programs, that are supposed to support Mr. Gainey’s violence prevention strategy.
Now, with little more than 800 sworn personnel, Pittsburgh officers are regularly asked to work two eight-hours shifts a day, with only a few hours between, increasing the potential for burnout and hostile interactions with civilians. In a vicious cycle, overwork and stress cripple morale and push officers to suburban police departments, or out of law enforcement altogether.
When the number of officers drops below 800, performing expected duties, such as staffing special events, including Steelers games, becomes tougher; with 700 officers, it becomes nearly impossible.
A delayed response
By 2025, the Bureau, optimistically, will lose 130 officers and gain 30, leaving it with about 700 — 200 fewer than what is considered full staffing. The Gainey administration is unprepared to meet that crisis. The recruits in the pipeline are too little, too late.
Mr. Gainey didn’t call for two new police academy classes until nine months into his term. One of them, moreover, has only three or four students, made up of law enforcement officers from other departments who need only abbreviated police training. The second class, for new officers, is slated to begin in August — nearly a year after it was announced, much longer than the three to six months usually needed to collect and vet a list of recruits.
Recruits then need up to 18 months of classroom and field training, meaning Pittsburgh won’t likely see new cops until 2025.
Worse, sources indicate the second class may not start in August. And given the challenges facing law enforcement agencies nationwide, it may not contain the customary 30 recruits.
Fearing reprisals from the mayor’s office, sources for this editorial requested anonymity. But the mayor’s refusal to answer tough questions won’t make them go away.
Pittsburgh is hardly alone in facing a crisis of police recruitment and retention, but Mr. Gainey’s nonchalance has aggravated the problem. Restocking the ranks of the police department must become a top priority — and that means hiring a chief who can do that.
After having already put the city at risk, Mr. Gainey must now move with an uncharacteristic sense of urgency.